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Questions tagged [backup]

Making copies of data so that the copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event, or for historical retention.

A backup is where you make a copy, or copies, of data, settings, preferences and other such information that would allow you to restore to the original state in the event of a data loss. It's also used for archival and historical retention.

Backup methods

  • Full - back up everything
  • Differential - back up things that changed since the last back up.

Strategies

  • External hard drive
  • Cloud storage syncing
  • Remote and off-site copies

Test your backup data

Backups are useless and futile if in the process to recover the information you've lost the data or information is incomplete or corrupted. You should periodically review the integrity and completeness of the data you wish to create a copy of.

Online-based tools

See also

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What utility can move my Windows boot partition over to another hard drive?

Can anyone recommend a cheap/free utility that can do this without very much effort? My preference is that it would be really easy. Boot into Windows Pick drive to move Pick target drive It copies everything over, and reboots to the correct…
Breadtruck
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Does an equivalent of Time Machine exist for Windows?

A simple Google search for "Time Machine for Windows" results in a flurry of different little apps. But instead of relying on forum anecdotes and advertisements, I call on the much wiser Super User beta community for some depth on this one. Having…
Kevin L.
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How to backup (WSL) Linux Subsystem for Windows 10, before system reset or reinstall?

My problem is that I have to reset or reinstall windows because of some problems but I spent a lot of time to configure WSL for development and don't want to lose it. Is there any way of backing up the whole WSL with it's settings and installed…
emipac
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Why is piping 'dd' through gzip so much faster than a direct copy?

I wanted to backup a path from a computer in my network to another computer in the same network over a 100 Mbit/s line. For this I did dd if=/local/path of=/remote/path/in/local/network/backup.img which gave me a very low network transfer speed of…
Foo Bar
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How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?

Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade? To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on the hard drive, like every 5 years or so. Is it…
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What medium should be used for long term, high volume, data storage (archival)?

This question was inspired by https://superuser.com/questions/374386/how-to-store-and-preserve-lots-of-data. There have been other similar questions, but none with the same criteria. This is two questions in one. How do you store financial/critical…
user606723
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Good block size for disk-cloning with diskdump (dd)

I use dd in its simplest form to clone a hard drive: dd if=INPUT of=OUTPUT However, I read in the manpage that dd knows a blocksize parameter. Is there an optimal value for the blocksize parameter that will speed up the cloning procedure?
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What does dd conv=sync,noerror do?

What's the effect of adding conv=sync,noerror when backing up an entire hard disk onto an image file? Is conv=sync,noerror a requirement when doing forensic stuff? If so, why is it the case with reference to Linux Fedora? Edit: OK, if I do dd…
dding
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How to automate regular Google Takeout backups to cloud storage

I would like to create regular Google Takeout backups (let's say every 3 months) and store them encrypted in some other cloud storage like DropBox or S3. It does not have to be a cloud-to-cloud solution, though preferred. It does not have to be 100%…
Michał Šrajer
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How to do rsync-like encrypted backup?

I want to save a backup of my data on a remote server, but never want the backup server to see the data unencrypted. Editing a single file and backing up should not result in everything being encrypted and sent again. The remote server should…
user67194
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How to view time machine log in MacOS Sierra?

In previous version of OSX, I was able to view the results of past Time Machine backup jobs thus: sudo syslog -F '$Time $Message' -k Sender com.apple.backupd Now syslog is no longer part of the operating system. It has been replaced by "log." I…
Arnstein
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How to store and preserve lots of data?

I have many DVDs with movies and games, they are getting old and dusty, some of them are damaged. And I have more than 300 GB of general files in my PC. I want to store and preserve all of my data and keep them for a long long time. I want to know…
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Software to backup data and files on a Windows computer

I have data and files on my system, running Windows, and want to make sure that I don't lose all the data or information when it gets toasted, either by a power surge or corrupted medium. I've heard that I should look into some kind of archive…
Piotr Dobrogost
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How to decode/decipher Mozilla Firefox proprietary .jsonlz4 format? (sessionstore-backups/recovery.jsonlz4)

I'm trying to get a handle on Mozilla Firefox's proprietary file format .jsonlz4, used, for example, for sessionstore-backups/recovery.jsonlz4, but to no avail. How do I get back my data, specifically, some long text I've typed in some textareas of…
cnst
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How to restore Chrome without "Restore" button and the files "Last Session" and "Last Tabs"?

I was using Chrome halfway when the computer crashed. Usually if I restart and re-run Chrome, there would be a Restore button to recover my lost Chrome session. However, I restarted in Safe Mode, and re-ran Chrome. I saw no Restore button (just a…
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